Visitors Vidharbha inflicted a crushing seven wicket defeat on hosts J&K in the match of the Under-23 Col CK Nayudu Trophy tournament at GGM science College Ground Jammu on Tuesday.

Set target of 168 runs to chase after J&K bundled out for 195 runs in second innings, Vidharbha chased down target in 59.1 overs for the loss of three wickets.

Earlier, third days’ play started with J&K resuming its innings from overnight total of 83 with three wickets down. J&K lost first wicket of the day in the shape of Shubham Singh Pundir on the score of 104 runs. With the addition of only two runs, Paras Sharma was the fifth wicket to fall in J&K innings.

Pundir scored 24 while as Sharma scored only two. Incidentally, both the players were recently dropped from J&K Ranji Trophy team and straightaway given a place in Under-23 team. But the duo have failed at this level as well.

Suryansh Raina who was fighting lonely battle tried to form stands with Zaid Mohammad and Fazil Rashid but they too departed cheaply. Zaid got out after scoring 20 while as Fazil scored 11 runs. Fazil was another player who was dropped from J&K Ranji trophy team and then found his place in Under-23 team at the expense of other players. Suryansh was eighth wicket to fall in J&K innings after scoring 92-run knock. J&K were bundled out for 195 run total, thus setting a target of 168 runs for Vidharbha. For Vidharbha DG Nalkande took six wickets.

Chasing a target of 168 runs to win, Vidharbha lost first wicket in the shape of AD Choudhari on the score of 28 but other opener SV Thubrikar kept going at the other end. He remained unbeaten on 82 while leading his team to win. SK Wath scored 42 while as YV Rathod scored 29 for them. MR Raut remained not out on eight. For J&K Sahil Lotra took two wickets while as Abid Mushtaq took one. Vidharbha earned six points from the match.

Earlier in its first innings, J&K team had folded for 201 run total. Sahil Lotra with 76 run knock was top scorer for them while as Shubham Pundir scored 46. In reply, Vidharbha scored 228 runs in their first inning and earned lead of 27 runs in first inning.

It is third straight defeat for J&K team in the tournament. They have played five matches so far and in every match have been outplayed by the opposition.

In first two matches, J&K conceded first innings lead points to Railways and Himachal Pradesh respectively. After that the graph of performance kept going down and J&K suffered 151-run defeat against Goa, followed by an innings and 146 run drubbing at the hands of Himachal Pradesh.

The 7-wicket defeat against Vidharbha was teams’ third straight defeat, and has left J&K stand at the bottom of the points table.

In view of team’s poor performance consistently, the selection process of the team has come under severe criticism with stakeholders raising various questions.